August 19, 2023

Sweden’s government is mulling wider powers to police under some changes to its Public Order Act, to restrict acts of hate against religions, such as the burning of the Holy Quran, after recent Islamophobic incidents in the Scandinavian country stirred anger among Muslims, Reuters reported. However, the legal amendments will be done only if such incidents threaten national security, the government said on Friday. The Nordic country on Thursday heightened its terror alert level to four on a scale of five, after the Quran burnings drew angry reactions from the Muslim world, saying it had averted attacks triggered by the acts against Islam’s holiest text. Sweden’s far-reaching freedom of speech laws provides protection to the insults towards public figures or against religions. Though the government maintains a rigid stance against changing these laws, Minister of Justice Gunnar Strommer has said that a commission would be appointed to look into giving police wider powers to deny acts such as desecration of Quran. “Of course, general international dissatisfaction or vague threat should not be enough — it must be about serious and qualified threats,” Strommer told a news conference on Friday. He said that the move could allow the police to shift the protest to a different location or dissolve it. An Iraqi resident of Sweden has damaged several copies of the Quran in recent months that sparked an international response. Sweden was on the extremist group’s radar before the recent Quran burnings, with a media outlet linked to the militant group al Qaeda urging violent retribution against the country. Last week, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the Swedish embassy in Beirut though it did not explode, and at the weekend al Qaeda called for attacks against the Scandinavian nation. The decision to appoint a panel was met with immediate distrust from numerous political parties, including the government’s support party, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats. Sweden Democrats’ party leader Jimmie Akesson said Sweden Democrats “will never accept that we adapt to threats and pressure” from extremists and dictatorships, even if different values always need to be weighed against each other. Earlier on Friday, the government said it had tightened security at embassies and other missions due to an increase in threats against Swedish interests abroad. Source: https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/1101706-sweden-considering-wider-powers-for-police-to-disallow-quran-burning

A senior political affairs officer at the United Nations has described how the sacrifice of colleagues who died in the attack on the UN offices at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, Iraq in 2003, has been acknowledged by the UN’s continued presence in the country. The then New York-based Elpida Rouka had accompanied the Executive Director of the Office of the Iraq Programme on a mission to Baghdad and survived the deadly explosion which killed 22 of her UN colleagues. The 19 August attack is commemorated annually by World Humanitarian Day. “A young 25-year-old barely two years into the UN at the time, I was in equal measure bright-eyed and bushy tailed practically cajoling the Executive Director of the Iraq programme to take me along on that August mission to Baghdad. I was naive about the workings of the world, not always a pretty sight, and the organization’s role therein. UN Photo/Violaine Martin Elpida Rouka, survivor of the bombing of the Canal Hotel in Baghdad on 19 August 2003 holds her damaged UN Laissez-Passer. Other than the personal cost, I suffered latent PTSD that manifested years later, and the personal cost to so many, I had not yet realized the cost to the organization. Baghdad changed everything for the UN. How we do things. Who we are. What the world thinks of us. What we think of us. I could not fathom why late Secretary-General Kofi Annan did not order the UN out of Iraq; years later, when I worked in his Cabinet, we made our peace. And yet I myself returned to Iraq four years on, not as an aid worker but as part of a political mission, a continuation of sorts of what Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN Special Representative in Iraq, who died in the attack, and his team had started that fateful summer. I had at last “consciously” embraced the UN blue. UN terrorist target Canal will always serve as a reminder, albeit a tragic one, of what the UN blue flag, for the first time a direct target of a terrorist attack, represents or must represent. I am now about the age many of those we lost on that day would have been. They embodied the spirit of the UN flag, defying risk, rising above politics, speaking up for those whose voices were silenced, talking truth to power, challenging more powerful groups when those are wrong, pushing against all odds and going back. They and everyone else we have lost and keep on losing since in too many conflicts where we have failed to bring about peace will continue to serve as a compass to course-correct, lest we forget that the oath of office encompassed the preamble of the UN Charter: “We, the peoples…” Several missions – Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Syria – and physical and emotional scars later, I continue to carry my scorched and shrapnelled UN laissez-passer from that August 2003 to remind me exactly of that. Changing nature of conflicts MINUSMA/Harandane Dicko Personal protective equipment (PPE) is widely used by UN staff for example in Mali (pictured). It is hard to tell whether 20 years on Canal has any meaning to the outside world or even to the younger generations of international civil servants, other than to the survivors. In many ways the nature of conflicts and UN engagement therein has changed significantly in two decades, with modern peace operations set in increasingly complex, constantly shifting, high-risk multipolar settings with involvement of non-State actors and violent extremists, asymmetry of use of force, spillover of conflict beyond borders, great power fallouts and ensuing deepening of global mistrust. Operating behind T-walls [protective concrete barriers that surround UN compounds in conflict-affected countries], out of sandbagged fortified compounds, in armoured vehicles, clad in PPEs [personal protective equipment] and wary of extended exposure to the locals is often considered the norm. © UNICEF/Diego Ibarra Sánchez In Iraq, children run with kites in Domiz Camp in Dohuk. At the same time, the organization is challenged to be accountable to its own and to those they serve. We still have many lessons to learn from Canal when it comes to the latter, for our missions to be fully prepared for the worst, for our staff to be conscious of the complexities of the places we are deployed in, and for our leadership to be able to clearly communicate what it is we are doing there. The same goes for the Member States which at times present us with impossible mandates. Yet the UN’s response to Canal was right in one major aspect: the UN did not abandon the Iraqis on that day, and in doing so it acknowledged the sacrifice of those who lost their lives in the pursuit of truth; those who remain a moral compass.” Source:https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/08/1139597

A state of emergency has been declared in Canada’s western British Columbia province, as a fast-moving wildfire threatens to destroy more homes in the area around the city of West Kelowna. Premier David Eby warned that “the situation has evolved rapidly and we are in for an extremely challenging situation in the days ahead”. The McDougall Creek wildfire has grown from 64 to 6,800 hectares in 24 hours. Some 4,800 people are now under evacuation orders. Separately, about 22,000 people – or roughly half the population – have been displaced in Canada’s Northwest Territories because of another huge wildfire. An official deadline to evacuate Yellowknife, the capital of Canada’s federal territory, has now lapsed. Residents have been scrambling to leave by air and road, in an effort to escape a wildfire moving towards the outskirts of the city. The numbers behind Canada’s worst wildfires season “This year, we’re facing the worst #BCWildfire season ever,” Mr Eby wrote on Friday in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Given these fast-moving conditions, we are declaring a provincial state of emergency.” The premier said this would ensure “that we’re in a position to rapidly access any tools we need to support communities”. He said that more and more people were being evacuated, warning that “emergency orders could include travel restrictions to specific areas if people do not respect our calls to avoid non-essential travel”. Earlier, West Kelowna fire chief Jason Brolund described the wildfire as “devastating”. “We fought hard last night to protect our community. We fought 100 years worth of fires all in one night,” he added. Local officials have already reported “significant structural loss” in the area, including in Trader’s Cove, just north of West Kelowna. No deaths have been reported so far. Juliana Loewen lives in Kelowna – a larger twin city of West Kelowna on the eastern shore of Okanagan Lake. She told the BBC how locals had watched a plume of smoke coming over the mountainside like an “ominous cloud of destruction” and how some on the Trader’s Cove side jumped into the lake as the fire spread and exit routes were blocked. Her brother and grandmother fled to her house after “the fire jumped very quickly from one tree to an entire area, threatening an entire residential community”. Local residents are used to the fires because of a “California-style climate” in the area – but the heat, dryness and wind seen in recent days had created the “perfect conditions for a firestorm”, Ms Loewen added. The airspace around Kelowna International Airport has now been closed to everything other than aerial firefighters. Socures:https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66551480